I have to admit something. I've been treating Wendy's like the king of national burger chains for years, possibly unfairly. Because I haven't tried anything from any other national burger chains in, well, over a decade for some of these folks. And while yes, Wendy's was better than the competition back then, who's to say it still is?
Obviously still me. It's my blog after all. But I decided that a shift toward democracy was in order, so I held an election for a new "president of national burger chains". I'm still the only voter, but I'm sure that won't present any bias issues. I've elected to start with a roundup of the obvious competitors in a 4-way head-to-head to see who is doing the best with the basics. I procured a sample of the cheapest burger available at Wendy's, McDonald's, Burger King, and Carl's Jr in standard menu form, along with a small fry. This is hardly a comprehensive comparison of their menus, just a test to see who executes best on the classics. Consider this the primaries. Followup testing may be required.
There are, of course, other popular burger chains around here I could have added into the roundup, but I don't consider places like In-N-Out and Five Guys to be quite widespread enough to be truly "national". Yet. Also, if a burger chain doesn't have a franchise around here, it's not a national chain. Turns out northern Utah is the yardstick for that, who knew. Also also, yes, Carl's Jr is a national chain. If you haven't ever seen one around where you live before, that's because it's called Hardee's there. Exact same menu, I promise.
Now other than MoDanufd's I really had no idea what to expect. I hadn't ordered an actual burger from either Carl's Junior or Burger Bing in, no kidding, over a decade, and I hadn't ordered anything from the bottom half of Wendy's menu in nearly as long. I also hadn't ordered a burger from McBaaaaa's in... uh, I genuinely can't recall if I've ever deliberately ordered a burger there for my own consumption. They were always ordered for me by other people. I'm not on speaking terms with those people anymore. Suffice it to say I have eaten some of their other food over the past couple of years so I knew pretty well what to expect.
I'll run through my first impressions in the order I got them, starting with Kruger King. Now, I've been maligning Burger Kurg in my personal circles for ages for a number of reasons. The last time I ate there someone gave me one of their tacos; that's one reason. They're also not doing super well, such that one of our local franchises died the depressing, slow death of a terminally ill party clown not too long ago and sits abandoned. Also because their mascot is nearly as nightmare inducing as MD's menagerie.
But credit where credit is due, they actually put up a strong showing here. Their sandwich wasn't the cheapest, costing just shy of $2.50, but the bun was high quality, the beef was moist, they had a good balance of sauce and veg, and to be fair, their cheapest burger does include cheese. Their fries were actually the high point, coming through the drive thru window piping hot, freshly fried, with a lovely crisp exterior, a delightfully creamy interior, and exactly the right amount of salt. My only note is that even for a small, the number of fries was disappointingly few.
Next up was the incumbent. Wendy's is a semi-regular component of my diet so nothing here was particularly surprising other than, perhaps, the fact that at $1.60 this burger was the second cheapest option out of all 4. As it happens Wendy's does, in fact, still sell a non-cheese burger for that price, and while the saucing, accompanying veg, beef, and bun were all pretty much in line with what I was expecting, that slice of dairy was missed. But for the price I certainly wasn't disappointed, and the accompanying fries were, as expected, among the best in the business.
Then the complete wildcard, Jarl's Cr. Bizarrely the cheapest burger they'll sell you under the throne of SMILING STARS is nearly four bucks, but to their credit, it's also a double cheeseburger. Genuinely I looked for a cheaper single patty sandwich, making their poor drive-thru operator sit and wait while I studied the menu in detail. Though, to be fair, I also got the feeling I was the first car they'd had drive through in hours, so it's not like they had anything better to do. But all their single patty stuff was specialty burgers that actually cost more.
The burger itself was... baffling. The meat was decent, and there was plenty of it, and the pickles were surprisingly good, but the bun was a pancake and the sauce was so unbalanced in the direction of mustard that I honestly had trouble tasting anything else. It was a very mixed bag, and the story was very similar for their fries. About half of them had the depressing limpness of fries that had been left to sit under a warming lamp for over ten minutes, while the other half had been sitting for so long they'd swung back to the complete opposite side of the scale and turned into potato chips. Which, like, as potato chips go they weren't bad, but I could-a sworn I ordered fries...
And finally, McBunkle's. Their sandwich tasted exclusively of cheap mustard, the bun was somehow more leathery than the beef jerky they were pretending was a patty, and the abysmal sprinkle of chopped onion they added was so pathetic both in appearance and in its utter lack of impact on the actual food I consumed that it threw me inexplicably into a brief stint of crippling depression. Even at $1.50 this burger was terrible. You'd honestly have to pay me cash-money to get me to eat another one.
The fries managed to be worse but in a way that defies description; I want to say they were somewhat akin to what you'd get if you took frozen fries from the grocery store, baked them instead of fried them, and then forgot to season them in any way. But those are the homemade "fries" I grew up eating, so I'm all too familiar with that particular brand of disappointment. My mom spent part of her childhood in England and was trying to make chips, not fries. As British chips go they were pretty accurate but the British are physiologically incapable of seasoning food.
The fries from MaDunter's were, somehow, even less than that. And that's frankly the only word I can use to describe them. Less. No flavor, no texture... they barely seemed to exist. I ate the majority of them with some fry sauce, and I genuinely would have had the exact same experience if I'd just eaten the sauce with a spoon. To top it off, the nation's most popular fast food restaurant had by far the worst drive-thru experience of the evening. How is it MuDuuuur's is so bad at processing high volumes of customers past a window when for places like In-N-Out and Chick-fil-a this is a solved problem?
In the end this race was closer than I expected at the top end. Both Burger King and Wendy's made comprehensively strong burgers for the price, though honestly both would have been improved by Carl's Jr's beef. Overall the burger I liked the most was still Wendy's, but it only beats out Burger King based on value, while the fries I liked the best were actually from the monarch himself, even if the value was slightly better at Wendy's. The perfect meal would have been a burger consisting of Carl's Jr's patties, Burger King's bun, with Wendy's cost, sauce, and veg, paired with an order of Burger King's fries using the sizing of Wendy's small.
My conclusion, then, is that Wendy's is still on top, but only just barely, and there was nothing about this cage match that makes me think Burger King won't have a shot at dethroning them. I think I'll compare the Whopper to a Dave's Double next. Carl's Jr comes in at a more distant third, but there were admirable qualities to be had there. I'll take a closer look at their menu. Maybe they'll show up here again.
And, to the surprise of none, MeFluffluff's served me a bag of joyless, empty calories that I essentially had to force myself to eat. The evergreen question remains; why do you people eat this? It's not even that much cheaper than the better stuff. Please, in the name of anything you hold holy, eat somewhere else.
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